In the field of athletics, especially in soccer and basketball, a player's control of the ball is essential to the player becoming a proficient athlete. In basketball, one main aspect of ball control is the player's ability to dribble the ball with maximum control and speed. In soccer, there are a variety of drills to increase ball control, such as ball juggling, which involves keeping the ball in the air by repeatedly kicking it up.
As both soccer and basketball have evolved with new technological advances, there has been an increasing demand for the quantification of a player's skills with respect to handling of the ball. However, the existing means for the average person to measure this skill is very limited, as well as costly.
The related art that provides quantified feedback to basketball users is limited to basketballs containing motion sensors, which measure the player's ball control abilities. These basketballs send users their data via Bluetooth to a mobile smart phone, which displays feedback such as the player's average number of dribbles per second. However, these sensor-enabled basketballs are required to be periodically charged, thereby limiting the portability of the product. Moreover, these expensive sensor embodied basketballs are limited only to data which can be derived from the sensors inside the ball. For example, average dribble height, relative location of the ball, crossover width and other analytical measurements cannot be determined by these basketballs, thus providing the user with very limited feedback regarding his or her dribbling abilities. Other than these expensive sensor-embodied basketballs, there is no other system for the average person to evaluate his ball control abilities.
The related art pertaining to soccer is similar, which is limited to sensor-embodied balls that provide feedback. However, these sensor-embodied balls are overly expensive and inconvenient because they must be periodically charged. Moreover, just as in the case of sensor basketballs, the analytic feedback provided to a user is limited only to the information that the inner sensors can provide.